The league says it went to prosecutors to find out why Elliott was not charged with a crime. The NFL was told, "We never concluded that she was lying to us ... we generally believed her for all of the incidents."

Prosecutors had previously said there was "conflicting and inconsistent information across all incidents, resulting in concern regarding the sufficiency of the evidence to support the filing of criminal charges."

The standard for prosecution is much higher than the standard for the NFL to mete out discipline.